Victus pro Scientia Opus -- Food for the Knowledge Worker

A New Chapter -- KMA and Sentri

"Even in the perfect world where everyone was equal
I still would own the portal and be working on the SQL."

-- Elvis Costello, "Every Day I Write the Book," with geek liberties taken

I'm excited to announce a new chapter in the direction of the team I've have the good fortune to work with for the last several (nearly six) years, and in my career:  KMA has sold its SharePoint practice to Sentri, Inc.

Starting today, Monday 13 February 2012, I'll be Sentri's General Manager of Strategic Services, with responsibility for Sentri's SharePoint and CRM practice areas. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to build upon what I've spent the past twelve years doing: helping business decision makers improve organizational performance using Microsoft business productivity technologies.

In addition to a strong existing SharePoint practice, Sentri has world-class capabilities around Microsoft core infrastructure and application platform technologies, so the combination of breadth and depth from Sentri and KMA is truly exciting.

When I take stock of where we are and how we've gotten here, I am thankful for the following:

• the time, capital, and wisdom invested in the SharePoint practice by KMA's founders Jorge Rodriguez and David Goldstein. I've learned an incredible amount from them over our time working together.
• the counsel, ideas and support of my business partner Jean Tufts and former colleagues such as Chris McNulty, Sadie Van Buren, Florin Muntean, James Henry, Sean Megley, Liz Hatch, and many others. Their ability to generate great ideas and execute on them with clients was the foundation for much of what we currently are, and they all pushed me to be better than I would have been otherwise.
• the clients and community members who provided constructive accountability as they learned alongside us over several generations of SharePoint product releases.
• the Managed Partner team at Microsoft, including world-class PAM Barrie Mirman, who now has one less partner to manage, and whose insight, energy, focus and commitment are unparalleled anywhere I've seen in Microsoft in my twelve years as a partner.
• the SharePoint community, who has embraced our thought leadership and given us a stage on which to tell our story.
• last but not least, I am thankful for the passion, commitment. and collegiality of KMA's SharePoint team, with whom I look forward to writing the next chapters in this story.

Expect to see more frequent updates via this medium now that the deal is done. It's early in this book, and there are many more chapters to be written. 

SharePoint Saturday Philly -- Recap and Presentation

I had an absolute blast presenting "A Decade of SharePoint Adoption Strategies" at SharePoint Saturday Philly this past weekend.  In addition to the usual friendly, motley band of itinerant SharePoint speakers from various ISVs and consultancies, there were several hundred attendees (about 450 overall). 

As one would expect from a group of people freely giving up their Saturday to learn about SharePoint, folks were engaged and enthusiastic about the subject matter, and my session was full of questions, cross-talk, and attendees sharing their ideas, successes, and challenges.  Their participation certainly made the 75 minutes fly by, and the conversations continued into the hallway and beyond.

I'd like to send a public shout-out to Mike Mukalian, David Mann, and the rest of the organizers, to Chris McNulty, who co-authored the presentation with me when we presented it at SharePoint Saturday - The Conference (DC) last summer, and to Sentri's Jason Himmelstein, with whom I drove down and who filled my brain with many great ideas about future presentation content.

The slides are here: 

A Decade of SharePoint Adoption Best Practices

View more PowerPoint from Mike Gilronan